


i'll follow you deep sea, baby

by orphan_account



Category: The Mummy (2017), The Mummy Returns (2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Falling In Love, Resurrection, Violence, villains falling for each other whatcha gonna do about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 19:56:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10951626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Ahmanet opens her eyes under a heavy blue sky.





	i'll follow you deep sea, baby

**Author's Note:**

> @ahmanet encouraged me to write meela/ahmanet + smut so here we are
> 
> sofi i hope you like it <3
> 
> sorry for any typos
> 
> titled after [i follow rivers (dan farber remix) by lykke li](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceuSrh7BHQs)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahmanet opens her eyes under a heavy blue sky. Her eyes move from left to right, roaming across the vast expanse; she squints at the sun and feels it bearing down on her, through the layers of linen and dust, and closes her eyes again.

She thinks: it is the same sun she saw before she was buried alive.

Blinking, becoming more awake, she inhales, coughs, and inhales again. The air is fouler than she remembers, weighed down by some invisible pollution her dry mouth can find no words of any kind to describe.

She thinks: this is not the same air she breathed before she was left to lie awake in the dark for so many days and so many nights.

She has been between dead and alive, asleep and awake, for some time now. Nothing comes out of her mouth when she opens it; her lips crack and bleed when she tries to speak; her eyes blink slow, adjusting to the brightness of midday in an unknown age. She swallows, coughs, and spits out something that looks a lot like ash.

Something touches her shoulder; she stiffens, dark rising with in her, remembering the last time someone did that—when they cut out her tongue and wrapped her up and closed her up in a never-ending night—and shifts her gaze.

It’s a woman. Someone she’s never met before. The hand is still hovering above her shoulder, fingertips achingly delicate as the woman slowly, slowly, takes her hand away. Immediately, the sun beats down on the empty space on her skin—skin, she sees, that is revealed to the sun through a break in the linen wrappings. The touch was warm, _human_ , entirely foreign at this point in time—wherever _that_ was—and something in her _hurt_ at its absence.

“Princess,” the woman murmurs softly, her accent warped by her current age but the words still clear-cut and fluid, and she bows her head, respectful, eyes fluttering shut.

Ahmanet takes a moment to look around: it’s just the two of them there, in the middle of crumbing ruins; there’s blood on the altar she woke up on, under her; her sarcophagus lies broken open a few paces away in the shade of a collapsed corner of a wall; when she looks off into the distance, she spots a group of men waiting by a group of camels, and behind them, some sort of contraption, a shiny, black box with a curved nose and sand-turned-to-glass eyeholes. Then she looks back at the woman. She tries to speak again; nothing comes out.

Her eyes are beginning to close again. She fights to keep them open, but the woman only shakes her head, puts that same, warm, blood-and-bone hand on her shoulder again and murmurs, “rest,” softly, not nearly a command but a suggestion, or an imitation of one, and then she’s actually falling asleep for the first time in what must be a thousand-thousand years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next few weeks are spent waking up. As in, _truly_ waking up. Ahmanet knows her body was carried across the sands to that black box, and when it rumbled to life, her first instinct was to wrap herself up in a storm and tear it apart, but the woman— _Meela_ , she heard somewhere while she dreamt, _Meela_ —rested her head in her lap as she was rested on the covered seat in the back. They traveled like that—with Ahmanet coming in and out of consciousness as Meela held her—for a while, with nothing to mark time but the rise and fall of the moon she saw before slipping back into sleep.

When she opens her eyes and sits up, there’s something sticking out of her arm, a clear bag holding something clearer than water hanging above her head. Someone supplies the word, “IV,” to her, but it means nothing, their language means nothing, not yet, not when she’s not fully awake. There’s a pitcher by her bedside, always, in some large house furnished with fabrics and furniture that she has no memory of from before her not-death. Her powers manifest in spite of her worldly body creaking and cracking with every move she makes, shaking the room, breaking something she can’t see behind her bed. The room is cool, though, and Meela’s presence is everlasting, seemingly permanent, and she’s patient and kind and loyal, Ahmanet thinks—but Ahmanet’s never been a fool. She’s hungry, already, her powers having finally come back and applied themselves, making her alert even as her body takes its time healing until she looks human again, and she _knows_ hungry. It’s the glittering dark in Meela’s eyes that gives her away, that lets Ahmanet know this woman is not truly kind or good or selfless. That hunger for power she recognizes—it’s a thread between them, tying them together from bottom-to-top rib. Ahmanet _trusts_ this, this thread, such a breakable and _human_ thing. Foolish, perhaps, but it’s somewhere to anchor herself in this new age.

Meela can’t lie to her, so the woman doesn’t bother. Ahmanet has killed at least three of Meela’s men, but she doesn’t seem to mind; she didn’t even bat an eye when one of them woke her and she saw the glint of steel in the sun and, for a moment, remembered suffocating and half-dying alone, sealed in tight in a space meant to hold her forever, and in a second she split him in half and left a mess of blood and gore on the stone floor.

After a while, Meela says, “Princess,” and she puts her hand on her shoulder, again—a soft white dress revealing bone-spattered flesh—and Ahmanet leans into it.

She can’t help it.

“Where are we?” Ahmanet asks after downing mouthfuls of ice, crunching it gleefully against her hardening teeth, reveling in the melting cold inside her belly. “What year?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Ahmanet looks sharply at Meela, who only smiles—sharp, knowing, _sly_.

“It’s still yours,” Meela says, “whatever the age.”

“Mine.” Ahmanet feels a smile curling at her lips. Abruptly, she reaches out—her muscles shaking from the effort—grabs a handful of Meela’s dress at the shoulder and pulls her closer. “Mine,” she repeats, looking into her eyes. Then she narrows her own, and hands of shadow and ash that are not her own but _of_ her reach inside a ways and finds the words stuck in Meela, stuck in her eyes, on her face, in the line of her shoulders.

Meela isn’t saying: _yours—mine—ours_.

“Help me out of bed,” Ahmanet commands—or tries to—and Meela obliges, slipping a hand across her back to support her weight. The sheets slip away, revealing decaying legs with flimsy ankles and broken knees. Healing is taking longer than expected. “Take me outside.”

Meela, saying nothing, smiles, and helps hero out of the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You don’t have to help me,” Ahmanet says.

“I know.” Meela’s eyes are glittering. “I need you.”

The words ring somewhere between true and false in the air, and it strikes a cord within the princess.

“I helped you. And you will help me.”

Destroy the world, she means. Ahmanet was planning on reshaping it long before she ever got here, but—

There’s something in her chest, rising, curling in her gut, and the only thing Ahmanet can do is find herself nodding and smiling right back at the other woman, their mouths filled with the sharp scent of gunpowder, and she realizes she wants—she wants—she _wants_ —

Ahmanet reaches inside of herself and squeezes her own heart until it falls silent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Men and women walk out of the room and bow to her, their languages falling on deaf ears until Meela translates and their allegiance is promised. Ahmanet summons her strength, makes herself look weaker than she is as to not alarm them—knowing cowards when she sees them, cowards who only look out for themselves and their coin purses—and grants them a wish, a request, promising them respite once she’s chewed up the world and swallowed it down. Partnerships forged out of cut palms and empty words out of the mouth of a girl who would have killed the world to become queen of everything she could see, smell, taste, touch, and hear, and more and more people are hired. Guns, cars, the works—Meela collects it and organizes, stockpiles, and confers as needed, when she needs to.

Out of everyone in this new place, Ahmanet spends the most time with Meela. They’re both cunning with cruel edges to them, but Ahmanet won’t peer inside Meela to see if she can find something that wants like Ahmanet wants—that is, something that might signal they want _the other_ , to be touched and held softly, to exist together in a space, a bubble, a pocket of clean air in a world choking on smoke where they can intertwine their hands, where Ahmanet can press a kiss to Meela’s wrist, where Meela might touch her shoulder and slide her hand across her shoulder blades, her fingers splayed, palm flat against the skin there, burning a handprint into place that Ahmanet will tattoo there herself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ahmanet won’t speak English. It’s a strange, dry, flat language that is not her own, but Meela can speak hers just the same—even if it’s obvious she came years after its genesis and golden age.

Ahmanet can peer inside Meela find that she wants power, wants to pluck a wing off a fly that can’t find back, wants to read from a book with death coating her fingertips and teeth, and it says more about her than she will ever really say out loud. She’s dark, like the inside of herself, and there’s light in there, light in _that_ alone. Meela may never realize that about herself—that there’s light in that evil lurking within her that makes the evil glitter in the morning sun like gems laid out on ink-smudged skin.

By the time she can walk by herself and not grow weak, perhaps a month or more has passed—Meela doesn’t concern herself with the days—and when that time comes, Ahmanet is restless, hungry, fingers wanting to scrape across the surface of the world so that they’ll leave scratch marks, deep and wounding, on the back of the body of this age, this changed world.

“You raised me to rule,” Ahmanet says one afternoon, under the shade of an umbrella perched above her chair.

Meela is sitting across from her, legs cross, shoulders apart, back straight.

“What do you want out of this?”

Meela only shakes her head.

Ahmanet could peer inside Meela and witness the truth, but Meela isn’t lying about anything; it’s just something she wrapped up and hid away from her, something that’s not ready to be said out loud.

Too many moments pass before Ahmanet speaks again. “Tell me something.” A gaping wound in her chest, one her magic can’t heal—for the first time, her own words are cutting her open. “Anything.”

“I dreamt you.” The words fall heavy and true into the space between them, leaden with something Ahmanet can taste in the air but can’t touch.

Neither of them say anything else for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That night, Meela sleeps in her own room, and Ahmanet dreams. She dreams of sand filling her mouth and Meela’s hands trying to dig her up, dig her out of her grave, and wakes up in a cold sweat, freezing, shivering, and alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“How long will this take?” Ahmanet hears one of the men standing guard by the door to the parlor ask. So many are uneasy and restless in her presence, in waiting for her eventual eating of the world. “She’s a fucking _monster_ —”

There’s silence, then nothing but the sound of a man breathing so hard his lungs are punched out. Ahmanet looks up from her hands to find Meela’s knife lodged against his throat, her dark eyes gleeful as she watches fear fill him up, his voice going out of him like blood from a wound.

No one speaks.

Meela’s smiling, sharp as the curve of her knife, when she leaves the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Briefly—for only a moment—Ahmanet finds that she wants to kiss her.

The moment lasts, though: it persists. It grows a body of its own and keeps her up all night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s something that was there from the start. But, now that they’ve had all these days together, their hands brushing, gazes meeting, hearts sharing the same rhythm.

“I want you to kill the world,” Meela says in the middle of the night, when her hand hovers over the princess’ shoulder. Both of them have lost the ability to sleep, and it seems that whenever they touch, there is nothing but burning between them.

“Is that all?”

“Yes, Princess.”

A lie. A blatant lie.

Ahmanet resists the urge to tear into it and find the truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two weeks later, Meela backs Ahmanet up against a wall in the middle of the night and kisses her, square on the mouth, and melts back into the shadows, leaving Ahmanet gaping in the dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another week passes, and Meela’s hand lingers on the small of her back, fingertips trailing down her bicep, soft and waiting for any sort of cue from Ahmanet to stop or to keep going, and Meela’s ribcage wants to burst open so that the dark inside her can bloom and swallow Meela up, too, except she’ll live through it and she’ll live forever, live always, become the furthest thing from mortal this world will ever know.

She lies awake that night and stares out her window at the stars, eyes narrowed, power stirring under her fingertips as she imagines moving her fingers through Meela’s hair, over her throat, across her ribs and down her waist, skirting over a hipbone and—

She bites down on her own lip until it bleeds, and falls asleep only when dawn chases away the edges of the night on the horizon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning, Meela’s eyes burn into her like the desert sun, and Ahmanet swallows, once, and thinks: _I want to you to swallow me whole_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s been months—maybe even a year—since Meela dug Ahmanet up. The two of them are sitting side by side on a sette in some secluded corner of the house, one that Meela locks herself in when they’re not together. They sip soup broth as a kind of starry-night cold settles in the room; Ahmanet’s lips are buzzing, Meela’s eyes are wandering all over the place, except her, and her heart’s found its voice again. It’s loud and insistent, her powers muted by the pounding inside her chest.

Ahmanet looks up and finds Meela staring at her—at her mouth.

Meela moves first. She leans forward, slow, so slow—prepared to stop at any moment—but then Ahmanet shifts and then her hands are empty, porcelain falling to the floor and breaking apart, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Their lips touch and then Meela is reeling her in, ensnaring her, and Ahmanet _lets her_ , lets this woman who’s more dangerous than anyone else in this house, this place, this world as she knows it pull her in close until they’re pressed against each other. Meela’s hands slide up and down her back, skin sliding over cotton and more skin. They kiss and Ahmanet forgets how to breathe, how to move, how to do anything but wind her arms around the other woman’s neck and kiss her back. It starts slow and light, but then Meela shifts so she’s leaning Ahmanet against the seat of the couch, so that she’s curled over her, and Ahmanet never thought Meela would taste like this—like saliva and dust and blood and vanilla and broth and the edge of her cruel, cruel knife—and her hands are clumsy after two-thousand years, her mind is blank, her heart threatening to burst apart in her chest.

Meela’s hands slip under her dress, sliding up her calves, dipping behind her knee. She asks: “is this alright? Is this alright?” And Ahmanet says, “ _yes, yes, yes,_ ” over and over again. Meela’s hands are slow and hot on her skin, slowing dragging upward; by this time Meela’s started trailing kisses down her throat, teeth scraping unsaid words and hieroglyphs into the skin there. The air is hot and heady between them, their breaths mingling, sharing oxygen and the taste of the other’s lips.

Ahmanet’s on her back, breathing hard, warmth curling in her gut like crooked finger, as her hands work to rip off Meela’s dress. Hers is already coming off, pooling around her waist as the straps are slipped off her shoulders, her arms pulled through by gentle hands that leave invisible prints wherever they go, and she’s aching, strangely, for maybe the first time, _really aching_ , between her legs, and she wants to eat Meela but she wants even more for Meela to swallow her, to drop her in her mouth like a grape and split her open, just like that, so she’ll burst.

Meela trails her hands over her waist, her chest, her back, and eventually slips her hand between her legs. Both of them in various states of undress, they lean into each other, mouths on mouths and mouths on skin and skin on skin. Ahmanet’s hands scrabble useless at Meela’s bare back as her throat is kissed and hands make her come apart. Fingers slip into her, over her, rubbing and twisting and crooking until she’s shaking, sweating mess and Meela’s murmuring something into her ear—something she can’t hear over her labored breathing or pounding heart—and then Meela sinks her teeth into her shoulder, into the soft flesh there; Ahmanet arches up into it, head falling back, mouth open in silent cry; her hips move with Meela’s hands, her skin on fire from every kiss and touch, and the thing in her gut like a crooked finger curls until a small sound—cracked like glass and unbidden like a dream—escapes her.

Her chest heaves, nerves singing a song no human (or monster) could ever know the words to as Meela wipes her fingers on the couch and embraces Ahmanet, curling around her, mouth resting on her throat until Ahmanet wriggles free and kisses her, rolls them over, and revels in the sharp inhale she can feel rather than hear in the air between them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the morning, Ahmanet wakes up to Meela pulling her closer to her. They’re on the floor, hair mussed, clothes rumpled, the spaces behind their knees slightly sticky with dried sweat, and Ahmanet swallows her powers down and allows herself to be held close like this.

Meela kisses her shoulder, brief and chaste, and Ahmanet’s eyes flutter close again.

She thinks: _this_ was what Meela hid behind her lie.

She thinks: _I’ll swallow the world for her if she swallows me, too._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
